Prisoner swaps: Anastasia's story

Ukrainecast

BBC

News Commentary, News

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Bringing soldiers back home is one of the few areas where Russia and Ukraine have made progress together in recent months, and another large scale prisoner swap started this week.

We talk to Anastasia - the wife of a Ukrainian soldier held captive since 2022, and released in May. But his new found freedom came against a backdrop of continuing Russian attacks on cities across Ukraine. We talk about whether we are seeing the retaliation for operation 'Spider Web'. Today’s episode is presented by Victoria Derbyshire and James Waterhouse. It was made by Arsenii Sokolov, and Polly Hope. The technical producer was Hannah Montgomery. The series producer was Chris Flynn. Email Ukrainecast@bbc.co.uk with your questions and comments. You can also send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram to +44 330 1239480

You can join the Ukrainecast discussion on Newscast’s Discord server here: tinyurl.com/ukrainecastdiscord

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:04.9	Hello, it's 1,203 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
0:10.8	Hello, my boy, I'm here. I'm here.
0:15.3	Hi, Mom.
0:17.4	All right.
0:17.6	All right.
0:18.8	All right.
0:20.0	All right.
0:20.8	Mama, I'm in the land.
0:22.7	Mom, I'll say,
0:23.1	come to
0:23.2	come.
0:24.7	That is so
0:25.9	emotional to
0:26.6	watch.
0:26.9	That is a
0:27.3	young Ukrainian
0:27.9	soldier,
0:28.6	calling his
0:29.1	mum, minutes
0:31.1	after being
0:31.7	released from
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.